Doomsday In The Afternoon
(Words & music John McCreadie)

Chorus:

What you don't realise or refuse to understand
That once it was the Travellers who had all the land
You can move them on from lay-bys
You can chase them from your toon
The Travellers will be with us till doomsday In the afternoon

They travelled the country aroond, each season had its place
Then the walls and ditches came, behind each a hostile face
Like the natives of the Amerikays piece by piece their land was lost
The settled folk made their own laws to say what they did was just

There's been meetings in Milngavie and everyone agrees
Keep it well away from houses and screen it well with trees
And in case it should bring doon the price of surrounding property
Put the Travellers' site anywhere you like - as long as it's no' near me

The Queen welcomed Belle at the Palace, in her local she can't get a half
We don't serve dirty tinks in here, we soon see that lot aff
In her local supermarket she heard two women say
I don't know what the Queen was thinkin', gi'in' a tink a medal onyway

The Travellers were at Auschwitz, there was Travellers at Belsen too
The Nazis treated the Travellers the same way as the Jews
But history turns a blind eye and remembers what it will
And for the Travelling People there is no Israel

Scotland

As sung by Arthur Johnstone

[1986:] Travellers will aye exist to the end o' time, and you'll never get them to change their ways, and you'll never get rid o' Tinkers. They'll be there till doomsday in the afternoon. (Belle Stewart, quoted in MacColl/Seeger, Doomsday xii)

[1989:] The travelling people are probably the most misunderstood section of the community. This song relates true events in the travellers' history. The title comes from Belle Stewart who, when asked the question "When would the travellers cease to wander?", replied "Doomsday - in the afternoon!" (Notes Arthur Johnstone, 'North By North')

[1990:] John's local Milngavie paper reported meetings to protest [against] council plans for a local campsite for travelling people. John linked this to stories told by traveller Belle Stewart of Blairgowrie about prejudice she had encountered. [...] When you think about travellers, remember that there are several different groups travelling the roads of Scotland. There are the Romany descendants of nomadic North Indian metal-working tribes who travelled across Europe to reach Scotland four or five hundred years ago. They claimed to have come from Egypt, so were called Egyptians or Gypsies for short. There were broken clans from the 1745 Rebellion, and families forced from their homes in the glens of Sutherland and elsewhere in the North and West during the 19th century Clearances, and freed serfs from much earlier times. Then there are the travelling Show people, who claim a very different descent. All of these groups occasionally make their home on vacant sites in Glasgow. One part of Shettleston is labelled on the map Little Egypt. In their long visit the travellers have experienced much hostility from the settled peoples, who must themselves at some earlier date have been travellers in order to arrive here. And as the travellers picked over the leavings of the earlier arrivals to find and salvage metal, they also found and preserved songs and stories, so that much of Scotland's heritage of song has been recovered by folklorists from traveller singers like Jeannie Robertson and the Stewarts of Blair. (McVicar, One Singer One Song 136)
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